NEW DELHI: A family in north Delhi faced perhaps the most terrifying moments in their lives when they were robbed at gunpoint just as they returned home, with their two young children in their car. Chilling CCTV footage from the car parking area of their home shows the family being robbed of their valuables by three masked men.
Varun Bahl said he saw three men, with their faces covered, on a motorcycle outside his home when they were returning to their home in Model Town from his wife's parents' home in the early hours of Sunday. Nervous, the family chose not to enter the home and drove ahead. "Realising that the house gates are all open and that too in the middle of the night, I drove back to my house and parked my car in the front verandah," he said in his complaint.
What was to come next was captured by the CCTV camera in the family's car parking area. Mr Bahl can be seen stepping out of his Mercedes and running to close the gate when the three men barge inside, pointing a gun at him.
Varun Bahl said the masked men took his wallet and gold bracelet. "They didn't seem interested in my watch," he wrote in the complaint. In the video, the wife can be seen sitting in the car with their two young children, one of them sleeping on her lap. The woman is seen taking out her phone, presumably to make an SOS call.
One of the robbers then goes up to the side of the car where the woman was sitting. The man opens the door and starts searching the car for valuables. All this while, the woman sits inside, holding her sleeping child tight. The older child is seated behind.
"He asked my wife if she was wearing a chain in the neck which she wasn't," Mr Bahl said. He said when the man couldn't find her purse (which she hid under the car seat), he took away the phone from her hand.
The men can be seen making Varun Bahl return to his car. As he stood up, one of the men points the gun at him before they walked away. "We got so scared that we just wanted to stay indoor in closed room. Even our kids kept on crying (sic)," he wrote.
The police, who have filed a First Information Report (FIR), are yet to make any arrests. They said the three robbers have carried out similar attacks in the past and that the men had fired at police personnel too.